TEDx Cape Town: Yoga Practice with Prisoners

Meet a man who goes to jail every week…but not for reasons you’d expect. For the past three years Cape Town yogi Brian Bergman has been visiting Pollsmoor, a high-security penitentiary, to give yoga lessons to the most hardened of inmates.

Meet a man who goes to jail every week…but not for reasons you’d expect. For the past three years Cape Town yogi Brian Bergman has been visiting Pollsmoor, a high-security penitentiary, to give yoga lessons to the most hardened of inmates.

Free Inside

Watch Free Inside, a SevaUnite documentary exploring the power of yoga and meditation as a social rehabilitation tool for inmates in one of South Africa’s largest prisons.

Watch Free Inside, a SevaUnite documentary exploring the power of yoga and meditation as a social rehabilitation tool for inmates in one of South Africa’s largest prisons.

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service.

– Mother Theresa

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. – Mother Theresa

Projects

Yoga For Africa

SevaUnite’s Yoga For Africa project is the driving force behind all of our yoga outreach programmes.

With a desire to share the benefits and transformative effects of yoga with as many people as possible, SevaUnite designed the YFA Manual which serves as an invaluable resource both for our volunteers involved in YFA projects, and for any aspiring yoga practitioner who wishes to develop their own practice.

Community Seva ProjectsThe Light Workshop
We assist our volunteers in starting Projects of their own in communities they’ve identified, where they feel yoga could uplift. One of our volunteers, Sanae Sawada, an accredited Yoga Alliance children’s yoga teacher has been single handedly pioneering The Light Workshop which teaches yoga to underprivileged children in Cape Town, SA.

Distributions

For many of us, we have too much stuff – too many clothes and pairs of shoes, overstocked linen cupboards, toys our children grew out of. Imagine knowing what a family in need could use, and being able to directly give them your excess things?

SevaUnite makes giving easy, not to mention rewarding.

We do a scout of an area that could use some assistance. We take names, we take household demographics, and we then collect, sort and pack parcels accordingly. On Distribution Day, recipients receive food, household and clothing hampers marked with their names, ensuring that what is required most is what gets received. A win-win for both recipient and distributor, as it feels as good to give as it does to receive.

You can help at any stage of the process:

Tell your network we’re collecting and help us gather goods.

Sort, pack and label hampers on the pre-distribution days.

Help us organize and carry out the distribution itself.

Do all, do some, whatever you choose, you’re enriching not only your life but those of others.

Sign up for our mailing list to keep informed of next distribution events

Drop your details below to stay in the loop about upcoming volunteer opportunities

Our Sponsor

The Prison Freedom Project which teaches yoga and mindfulness to offenders in South Africa, is kindly supported by the National Lotteries Commission.

The SevaUnite Trust

NPO 078-231 PBO 930 031 022

Make a deposit directly into our Bank Account

The SevaUnite Trust
First National Bank.
Branch: Sea Point 201809
Account Number: 62620983074

Please use your name as a reference
Let us know via email if you would like a receipt